“Great.” Rafe rubbed the back of his neck. “First you get cold-cocked by a female, then our great and fearless leader disappears. Two messes I have to clean up.”
“Fuck you.” Gar sounded less than pleased, and Rafe allowed himself a chuckle. “Think it’s funny? She’s dangerous, brother mine, and you’re stuck with her. She has information on Blue Rim that they’re desperate to get back. They offered a hundred thousand beks for her safe return to the planet. Hell, it’s obvious she’s one of their experiments.”
“I know.”
“She told you?”
“She told me she and the other prisoner ships getting lost in ‘deep space’ are ending up on Eyra as part of Blue Rim’s illegal test subjects. Apparently, the lab is responsible for the half dozen ships gone missing, which is probably what Sernal expected, and why he assigned you to investigate Blue Rim.
“They use the prisoners as lab rats. For a small fee, those prisoners just ‘disappear’. The prisons don’t worry about overcrowding, and Blue Rim doesn’t have to answer to System law about illegal scientific experimentation.”
Gar remained silent.
“What?” Rafe kept an eye on his surroundings, fully expecting another group of peacemakers to show when the three idiots he’d encountered didn’t report in. He felt both furious and embarrassed to see lawmen he should have been proud to call his peers acting like corrupt barbarians.
“I’m not buying it, Rafe. She’s one of Blue Rim’s experiments? She took out Drekk in two seconds, not to mention she knocked me flat on my ass. And what about you? You’re saying a female ‘experiment’ took out two Xema warriors in their prime?” Gar had a point.
But still…
“If not an experiment, then what?”
“I’ve been hearing rumours about a resurgence in the System’s push to regulate Eyran practices much more closely.” Gar paused, and Rafe had a bad feeling sinking into his bones.
“I think she might be a Creation.”
Rafe let the cursed word sink in. A Creation, an entity not born, but developed and formed by mortal men and women, not the planetary gods and goddesses as nature intended. An abomination by law and morality, and clearly justified as lethal anomalies during the Eyran War of 2845.
A long time ago, the scientists on Eyra had free reign to do whatever they wanted in the name of science. In doing so, they’d inadvertently manufactured a race of crazy, deviant psychotics with incredible strength and cunning, who had banded together and killed thousands before the peacemakers had stopped them.
As a result, the Vrail Council outlawed Creation as a rule, allowing the occasional android or clone only for specific scientific purposes and only under Council’s unanimously voted decision.
Hell, Rafe could name all the clones on Mardu, as well as the androids on Nebe6. There were maybe twenty of them in all, and the peacemakers watched them with careful eyes at all times.
“She’s not a Creation.” He couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe it, even as something inside him whispered to listen to what his brother told him. “She could have killed me twice now, yet she didn’t. She wants my help.”
“To kill everyone at Blue Rim,” Gar added caustically.
“Hell, yeah. But can you blame her? If what she says is true, then the labs are doing things to people they shouldn’t be. And brother, you saw her eyes. How much do you think it hurt to turn them purple? Her pupils are yellow.” Gold actually, a colour that flared with heat whenever she stared at him.
“… Rafe? Are you hearing me?”
Dammit. “Say that again. I think we’re losing the connection.” Rafe could only be glad this comm unit didn’t have a vidphone. He’d catch hell if Gar caught him flushing with embarrassment. Letting my dick do my thinking when I should be planning a way out of this mess.
“I said you need to play this out. I’ll take care of the peacemakers you knocked out down there. But with the amount of currency Blue Rim is offering as a reward, we can’t trust a lot of our guys with this mission. Sad but true. And Sernal can kiss my ass if he doesn’t like me mistrusting his people.
“You take care of her. Get her to confide in you what’s really going on at Blue Rim.
Details. And Drekk’s coming with you. I don’t trust her, Rafe. And you aren’t thinking straight because you’re letting your—”
“I’ll contact you in two days. Out.” Rafe disconnected and pocketed the communicator.
Gar wouldn’t like it, but Rafe didn’t need Drekk covering his ass. Rafe would take care of Erin, and he sure as hell didn’t want Drekk around when he did so.
Recalling the feel of Erin’s mouth over him as if she’d just taken him to wainu, Rafe swore at his overactive glands and took a moment to regain control before he headed towards Herm. How a woman could be so soft and willing one minute and so damned dangerous the next baffled him. Yet she’d taken both him and Gar down, and had handled him in the rover easily, when Rafe clearly outweighed her twice over.
But leaving her with Ollen… It had taken considerable control to let Erin take care of him, that disgusting excuse for a lawman. But take care of him she had. Rafe had tuned in to their conversation with his keen hearing, pleased she hadn’t let the jerk lay one more finger on her than necessary. Rafe, however, still didn’t like the fact that she’d had to defend herself, and had taken his frustration out on Ollen’s companions.
Personally, Rafe couldn’t wait to see what Sernal would do to the corrupt peacemakers, if Sernal was even around. Gar should have been able to get through to Sernal by now.
Especially through their personal channels, a Mardu hotline all of the brothers shared on a special communicator never far from reach. Rafe could only hope Sernal fared well, and that perhaps his brother had to remain incommunicado for a mission’s sake.
Sighing, Rafe tucked away his unease and focused on Erin. For the right price, Herm would forget he’d ever seen them, especially once Rafe promised to send better peacemaker protection his way. Of course, Herm wouldn’t know who had sent them, just that a reliable
‘friend’ of Cheltam’s would make good on the promise.
Now to dump Herm and move before Gar sicced Drekk on them. Because Gar wouldn’t be denied, and he wanted Drekk to watch over his ‘little’ brother. Rafe fumed. He didn’t need the help, but overprotective Gar couldn’t hear “no” past his stubborn brain. He didn’t like Erin and would no doubt destroy her the first chance he had if she turned out to be a Creation. The old Gar would have given her a chance, but this tougher, harsher Gar would kill her without a qualm if she threatened his brother’s life. And Rafe refused to let that happen.
“That little whelp hung up on me.” Gar glared at his communicator, ignoring the chuckle from Drekk.
“I told you as much. Hell, Gar. He’s you but with a sunnier attitude. Of course he won’t take your help, not when there’s a pretty female needing him. He’s too tenderhearted for the job. I told him so before.” Drekk sighed and leaned back on a plush divan, clutching the back of his neck with a grimace. “Damn, that girl put me down hard. I think I like her.”
“Took you out like a boy fresh from the fields. Tears, for Flor’s sake. She suckered you with damned tears.” Gar glared at Drekk, not seeing the humour in any of it. That female was no more an experiment than he was. He’d stake his life on it. She fought too well, and that form, those eyes… She wasn’t normal, and if Blue Rim wanted as much for her as they were asking, Erin would bring Rafe nothing but trouble and pain. With Sernal also gone missing, Gar didn’t know what to do. Rafe, at least, he had a tentative handle on. But Sernal never took time away from his new job as both commander of Lady Justice, his ship, and of the new Peacemaker Central satellite station, Libetter. Worry filled him, an instinctive call to protect his own that he would heed this time. He refused to lose anyone else he cared about ever again.